Word's fairs in the second half of the nineteenth century and architectural representation of the Ottoman Empire

It is a rational fact that we live in a global world today. It is difficult to define what "global" rationally is. Although the world has become more complex with globalisation, the architecture in world cities has become much more similar from nineteenth century onwards. Changes based primarily on Renaissance and Reform; developed further via French Revolution (1789-99), British Industrial Revolution (1765-1850) and transformations in America and turned into mass movements in the nineteenth century. Being a discipline of natural sciences with its technical and rational content, a discipline of social sciences with the contextes in which it emerges and a discipline of human sciences with its most unpredictable part design, architecture makes it possible to have synchronic evaluations as a display of the nineteenth century. Second half of the nineteenth century is known as the period of universal expositions in the western world. Starting with London in 1851, World's Fairs have been the universal platforms where the "modern global world" represented by the West lead the economic transition of the marketplace to liberalism. Being the welcoming part of the organisation, the West celebrated informally its technological and industrial advances in these expositions by showing them as major ongoing events of history to visitors from all over the world. Homogenized under the big title "Islam" as the counter-part of the West, non-Western world was represented as the new market for raw material and manpower in the beginning of the international trade era. Many participants from all over the world pioneered huge amounts of infrastructural and logistic investments in search of big sized and "temporary" display spaces for their technological and industrial advances to be shown in the World's Fairs. Following the revolutions, "style" in architecture has become "invention" going even one step forward with the universal expositions where new construction materials were freely tried and experienced worlwide. Participant countries in the World's Fairs either constructed their own pavilions or -as in most cases- respresented their local products in the pavilions constructed for them by the Western welcoming countries. The thesis examines the display of global capitalism and liberal economy focusing mainly on the World's Fairs. Main target beyond is to examine the local representation of the homogenized counter world taking late Ottoman Empire as the case study and to investigate alternative methodologies for architecture history with a sceptial view on "style" in a globalized world from nineteenth century onwards. The World's Fairs taken as case studies of this thesis are 1851 London, 1867-1878- 1889-1900 Paris, 1873 Vienna and 1893 Chicago Expositions. Since World's Fairs starting with 1851 London Exposition turned into specialized trade fairs by the end of the century, those that took place after are not part of this research. Apart from introduction and results, the thesis is mainly in four parts. The first part evaluates the historical and economic background, focusing on the architectural display of the transition from marketplace to liberal economy and the impacts of new technologies on architecture and construction. Second part examines the "Global Modern" and the "Local Representation" of the non-Western world which was homogenized under "Islam" title. Third part evaluates the historical and economic background of the late Ottoman Empire, enabling a comparative analysis with nineteenth century Europe given in the first part and examines the development process of the uniqueness of the Ottoman Architecture. Fourth part evaluates the World's Fairs main buildings and national pavilions in major scale and specifically the representation of the Ottoman Empire in minor scale as a cultural identification element, using architecture and exposed products. The thesis ends with the conclusion part where the discussed topics and results of the research are brought to today.